


The Old and the New

by pinebluffvariant



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:25:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebluffvariant/pseuds/pinebluffvariant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Scully household, wine is the go-to drink to unwind with, and here he is in her space. “Here,” she says and hands him the glass. They toast. “To new things.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mulder is a little surprised when Scully invites him over to her place after they’ve wrapped the case. Should he be or should he not? He can’t quite tell. He can’t believe that they’re here - he wants to say back here, but that’s not true. He still has all his hair, but that’s really the only thing that’s the same.

Things are different. The year is 2016, not 2000. He’s carrying 20 more pounds, all muscle. He takes his Zoloft, does his pull-ups, breathes air rather than gulping it. He shaves regularly after years of not-so-carefully cultivated ruggedness. He doesn’t know any of the hipster bars in Adams Morgan anymore. He sleeps alone most nights, but he hasn’t cried in a couple of months. When he is not alone, she’s there with her hands and her mouth, her teeth and her skin. On rare occasions she’s even there when he wakes up.

He wears a suit again and she wears a suit again and they argue and point at notes on their tablets; they agree to meet up later and she takes off for the lab. He eats a sandwich alone in his car and saves a bear claw for her to nibble on later. He flashes his badge and steps in dog shit in a dark alley. He calls her and tells her it’s him.

Everything is brand new, and they’ve agreed to take it slow. Which is why he feels strange taking off his suit jacket and tugging on his tie in her bedroom. The hardwood floors tell him this place isn’t cheap, but the brass hardware, painted over by careless prior owners, tells him the truth about this building: it’s old, and tens and tens of people have probably slept here, lived in these rooms and screwed in the shower. He likes the idea that he might join their ranks, but doesn’t let himself take this thought any further. Slow.

“Mulder?” Scully calls from the living room. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I have anything for you to change into. Wait, no - check the top left drawer in the closet.”

Slow, he tells himself, new, don’t feel the loss of years of sharing clothes, don’t mourn, slow and new, slow and new. He wades through her charming mess of a closet, opens the drawer, pulls out a soft t-shirt. He pretends he doesn’t remember squeezing her breasts underneath it in 2009. He closes the door, strangely shy, and changes.

When he joins her, she’s curled up on the couch with two glasses of wine. In the Scully household, wine is the go-to drink to unwind with, and here he is in her space. “Here,” she says and hands him the glass. They toast. “To new things.”

He thinks she must be feeling it too, the buzzing energy between them, not knowing where to put their hands, whether they can say, ‘this is my partner’, and chuckle silently at the double truth of the word.

“To new advances in law enforcement,” he agrees, “iPads and cops unironically saying ‘I’ll upload it to the cloud for you’. If you’d asked me twenty years ago I’d have insisted this shit was UFO technology.“

Scully sighs, tosses her head back on the couch cushion, and smiles. “I know,” she says. “But you do realize, Mulder, some things do in fact remain the same.”

“I- I don’t know. Do they?” Where is she going with this?

That smile again, he hasn’t seen this in years, what the hell? This is the impish Scully smile, the ‘I’m up to no good’ smile, the one she flashed him that one time at her mother’s house. She had dragged him into the bathroom and proceeded to fellate him thoroughly and with great gusto.

She gets up, bounces on her feet, and picks up a plastic bag from the sideboard. “Check this out.” Her giggle ripples through his body, trickles straight down to his cock. Slow, slow, slow, Mulder, come on.

“What- do I want to?” He opens the bag. What. The. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Scully!”

She bursts into laughter, he’s confused and it’s gorgeous. Scully collapses back on the couch, shaking. She clutches his arm and stomps her feet on the rug.

“Oh Mulder, Mulder, oh your face right now!”

In his hand is a DVD case.

“The LEZarus Bowl? Scully? What the hell is this?”

“I stopped at a convenience store last time I came down to see you! And there was this DVD display and- and-” she wheezes and starts laughing again. “Oh my god, Mulder, we have to watch it!”

“No, Scully.” He shifts uncomfortably, tries to stick the DVD back into the bag but she catches his hand.

“Mulder, YES!”

“No. I can’t-“

She’s thoroughly hysterical now, her face red, amazing. Her eyes have never been so blue. “THEY MADE PORN OF OUR MOVIE, MULDER. PORN.”

How can he refuse?

“And look, that’s you!” Scully gleefully grabs the case from him, turns it over and stabs her pretty little finger right between the tits of a very well-endowed, lithe brunette. “Look at Agent Nail-her, Mulder. Look at her! She’s gorgeous! Ohhhhhh god!” He’s never seen a Scully laughing fit like this before. If this is part of the newness… he guesses he’ll take it.

Then she ruffles his hair and he comes completely undone, collapsing into giggles, shaking until he’s crying and clutching her to him.

“You’re not so bad yourself…” he mumbles after coming up for air.

“Let’s watch it, Mulder.”

Ten minutes later, Mulder and Scully are howling with laughter. On the screen, two women very underdressed for work - a tall, not bad-looking brunette with a nicely proportioned nose, and a petite little morsel whose carpet definitely doesn’t match the drapes - are climbing up onto an oversized desk. The little vixen unholsters the brunette’s gun and - oh god - snakes it between her legs. “I need your professional opinion, partner,” she moans as the brunette settles on her knees on the floor.

Mulder can’t see straight, he’s crying so hard with laughter. It occurs to him that he and Scully have never laughed like this before, together. Not like this. Next to him Scully is downing the last of her wine, perhaps not the best idea, and she snorts and coughs and collapses half on top of him. Her hand is suddenly underneath his t-shirt. She looks up and there it is again, that grin. Not smooth at all, Scully, he thinks as her elbow brushes against his dick, revealing that he can in fact, predictably, not help himself with this movie.

She starts climbing up into his lap. Her voice is so close, so low, and so new, as she breathes into his ear. “Just checking.”


	2. Take Her Word (The Old and the New, part 2/3)

If Mulder’s learned anything in his life, he has learned not to doubt the word of Dana Scully.

One bright morning a few months ago, Mulder found himself sitting in a cafe with “artisanal” in its name, balancing on a bar stool much too flimsy for the average American man. It wobbled, which drove him nuts, so he ended up standing shoulder to shoulder with sharply suited, blinding Dana Scully, perched primly in her own seat. She brought her cappuccino to her lips and licked a little foam off the rim of her cup. Deep inside Mulder’s separation anxiety, the part of him he’d worked to tame over the past couple of years without her, an abacus swiftly and noisily summed up every single time he’d ever seen her do that, lick her foam like that. Hundreds of times. In the morning, at night, on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the office, in the car, in his bed, in their bed. He shook it all off, willed himself to look at her as she was now, only now. She was beautiful.

He had to admit, his coffee was good. He almost missed her raised eyebrow.

“Sorry the coffee didn’t come straight out of a car battery. What’s up?”

“No, no, it’s good,” he smiled. “It’s all good. This is nice, having breakfast like this.”

She shifted to face him more fully. “It is, isn’t it?” She sighed. “Thank you for coming out this morning. Sorry it’s so brief but I’ve got a meeting downtown in an hour.”

“I’ll drive you,” he offered and tipped an imaginary drivers cap at her. Her smile lit up the space, illuminated the white, marble and chrome.

“That’s okay, I’ll catch a cab. But I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He couldn’t help the hesitation. They never did talking very well. He’d never been prouder of the two of them than the day they’d finally laid it all on the table about William, but after that one success, they’d never recaptured the talking magic. He thought of her yelling at him at his door a few weeks ago, how hurtful it had felt to hear her call herself his friend, how shame washed over him when he hadn’t been able to stop his own tirade from falling past his lips. But at least he saw it now - this right here was a prime example of when to shut up, pay attention, and listen. “Scully?”

Her eyes darted between his face and her coffee, settled on his eyes. “I’ve missed you. And with this work arrangement we’ve got coming up, I’ve been thinking about how I’ll hear from you more, how I’ll see you more regularly. You’re back in DC.” She followed his gaze out onto the street, where a work crew was jackhammering the sidewalk, two children in young professional uniforms stood around fussing with their phones, a street canvasser trying to get their attention in vain.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that… Mulder, I promised myself I wouldn’t drown in this again, in us.” He nodded, got ready for whatever was coming. “No, listen. I won’t do that again, it’s not good for either of us. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to… We can be present and intentional, can’t we?”

She sought out his eyes again, laid her hand on his on top of the bar. They’d always been close talkers. “I want to take it slow, okay?” Her fingers caressed his and reassured him, as they always had. “I want to see more of you, more frequently. Come over, and I’ll come to yours. We’ll have breakfast, coffee, okay?”

“I’ll cook you that chicken you like,” he offered stupidly.

“Yeah. Exactly. Okay?” Her voice was clear and fresh like dew.

“Okay.”

****

He knows not to doubt her word, but this scene right here doesn’t read 'slow' to him.

They are on her couch, in the dark, wine finished, ridiculous movie forgotten, she’s in his lap, his hands in her hair. She cups him through his beltless slacks, and she squeezes. “Just checking,” she breathes into his ear, swirls her tongue around the edge, “looks like we got the all-clear.”

This isn’t the first time she’s started something since they decided to take it slow. There have been a couple of times at his place, once when they’d gotten delayed coming back from the field. This new experience of her is amazing to him, like opening a present on his birthday every single time. Because he’s decided he isn’t a little boy anymore, he hasn’t been peeking or shaking the box, and is rewarded with the most peculiar, intoxicating sensation when he finally does get her where he wants her. When they’re spooned up on his living room rug, her hand reaching back to clutch at his ass, there it is:

He feels like glass, like he’s about to shatter all over the universe, and he can’t wait for it to just happen.

She moves against him on the couch, grinds her soft braless t-shirt chest into his to get his attention. She’s always done that, and it always works. He buries his face in her hair and grinds back weakly, his cock nudging her crotch.

“Mulder, hey….”

“This doesn’t feel slow to me,” his voice is muffled against her neck. Her hips are still working little circles in counterpoint to his. But he’s got to, got to make sure this is right.

Her low chuckle interrupts his struggle for control. “I can slow down some more if you want,” she punctuates by squeezing his neck where it rests against her shoulder, “but I don’t recall you objecting to my speed the other week.”

He leans his cheek into her hand, looks up at her, stills her hips with his hands. She continues to stroke his chest. “I know, but that was different. You’re more than welcome to jump me at my place, but here…”

“I don’t follow,” she says, still stroking, and he knows this Scully voice. It’s the little annoyed squirrel tone she takes on when she’s horny and isn’t getting her way.

“Scully, you invited me here and I have to admit, I - You’re getting me all worked up but I don’t know if this is congruous with our new philosophy, you know? I’ve never even been into your bedroom before. You need to tell me it’s okay.”

“Mulder, are you saying you’re feeling shy because a girl is throwing herself at you but you don’t know if she’s for real?”

She starts giggling again, not at all the roaring laugh from earlier, but low, and she tries to hide it probably out of consideration for his possibly unbecoming vulnerability. But that’s okay, he tells himself, because again he’s not a little boy anymore and he can take it. Anything worth doing, as they say, is worth doing right. His dick protests and he gives another little thrust to break her giggle fit.

“So what if I am? You’ve always known I’m just a dorky shy guy. I know the ripped bod may throw you off but-“

“Let me show you my bedroom, Mulder.” Scully scampers off his lap, smooths her t-shirt down where it has ridden up during their little petting session, and holds out her hand. “Come on, take yes for an answer.”

When she pulls him to his feet she reaches up, cups his neck, and draws him down into a kiss. This, this kiss he knows. This is the kind of kiss she gives him to say ’trust me’, and ‘I know’, and ‘I need you’, and ‘come on, it’s been weeks’ all at once. Her lips play over his and he can feel the smile straining her cupid’s bow. Her tongue flicks out to wet his lips. She scratches the back of his neck affectionately. Her other hand scratches down his stomach. “This slow enough for you?”

He’s not a kid anymore, he’s got a man’s strength, and so he wraps his hands around her hips, digs his fingertips just a touch inside the crack of her sweet ass, lifts her up, and groans when she winds her legs around his waist with practiced ease. He carries her back to her room.


	3. Tesseract (The Old and the New, part 3/3)

The sheets rustle under Mulder’s wool-clad legs as he blindly scoots more to the center of the mattress, careful not to break the contact between his body and Scully’s. Scully is on his lap, squirming and nuzzling his temple. They’re dry humping like kids and he could stay here forever, savoring the friction.

This is his fourth time having sex in almost three years now, and he’s starting to see that his medication is helping more than just his mood. As the cobwebs and noise have gradually cleared in his brain, he’s become more attuned to sensations, focused and present. The best application of this pleasant surprise is, of course, to re-catalogue every inch of the one person he’ll ever do this with, ever again.

Her little body is pressed so tightly against him; in his mind the molecules of their skin and their clothes are broken down, they’re mingling and merging. The fact that this is probably what’s going to happen in a little while drives him completely crazy.

Mulder has a distinct feeling that usually, Scully’s condo is quiet, save the occasional coffee grinder, Chopin, and stiletto heel strike on the hardwood floor when she’s rushing around, trying to make it to work on time. He decides to make his aural mark on her space and lets out a loud, low moan against her neck. He knows she likes it, she always has.

“We’ll wake the neighbors,” Scully half-breathes, half-giggles. He squeezes her ass harder, draws her closer to him, and rubs her torso all over his. “Although maybe the porno we just watched took care of that.“

“Boom chicka-wah-wah,” Mulder laughs. This new Scully is fucking delightful. “Sexy, sassy, Scully, where have you been all my life?”

She stills suddenly, both their heartbeats racing between them. When she looks up at him, her eyes are huge and hugely blue, and she smiles sadly, sweetly. She reaches down and tugs at the hem of his t-shirt - Mulder guesses that’s enough past-talk for the moment and refocuses his attention, lets her scratch her nails up the sides of his torso and toss the t-shirt behind her. He puts on a little show and gasps dramatically, flops onto his back on the bed.

Scully wiggles her way up his lap a little bit, making damn sure to tease his cock with a grind of her ass on her way closer to his face. She looks him up and down and it sends a shiver down his spine. He’ll never, ever admit to this, but nothing turns him on more than being made to feel like a little bit of a slut.

“Fox Mulder works out,” Scully’s breathy voice strains against the air, her palms running up and down his body along with her eyes, playing him, reading his arms and his abs and, he hopes, liking what they feel. “This is so very, very good, Mulder. I love you at fifty-five.”

“I’m fifty-four,” Mulder manages to toss back at her in a mock-hurt voice.

Inside he shatters from her - conditional? - declaration of love.

Scully’s little snicker of triumph is the last straw. Mulder grabs her by the hips, uses his smoothest judo move to flip them over so she’s squirming underneath him, her legs and arms winding around his torso like vines. Squeeze the life out of me, Scully, it’s all yours anyway, he thinks. Somehow they go from zero to eighty in the space of a few seconds. Scully gasps ‘yeah, oh yeah’, working up unbearable friction between the two of them, until he has to still her. He sits up on his knees, pulling her with him, and pries her legs from around his hips, pries them open with his hands splayed on the insides of her thighs. He tosses her to the mattress and she gasps and pants and starts clawing at the fly of her jeans, scrambles backward up to the headboard of the bed, where she shucks her jeans and underwear swiftly and opens her legs, brings herself into full view.

Mulder is mesmerized by the sight of her, taut and throbbing, the swell of the bottom of her glorious tits peeking provocatively out from the hem of her bunched-up t-shirt. He’s a little proud of himself, looking down at himself, to find that he’s hard as a fucking knife, his pants already undone and hanging low on his hips. He knows Scully likes this view, where cloth meets skin and hair. Her drunk gaze flutters around his hips, and stomach, and cock, as he hovers closer to her. She slips a manicured hand into the cleft of her cunt and - oh God, he can’t stand it - starts working the delicate shaft of her clit between the first knuckles of her index and middle fingers.

Their eyes meet for an instant. Scully’s eyelids flutter closed and she whimpers weakly. Her hips buck toward him, and this really is it.

They’re not missionary people, never have been, so he wastes no time in scooting up to her on his knees, grabbing her at the waist and reclining carefully until he’s on his back and she’s arranged herself on top of him. She moves with purpose and efficiency, her hand cool on his cock, tugging and none-too-gently guiding him in.

The sound and sensation of her fucking him is incredible. Whenever they fuck like this he gives into it and lets the waves carry him away. He starts tripping, becomes a synesthete, tastes the wetness of their bodies slapping together, smells all her muscles clenching around him, sees the red and black sparks of his cock bottoming out inside her when she rides him this way. His fingertips graze the inside of her thigh as she continues to move above him, and he slides the callused pad of his thumb gently across where they're joined, settling on her clit, pluckling it like he would a violin.

She climbs very, very fast, and his eyes roll back in his head when he sees her tear at her t-shirt, bunched around her armpits, one hand twining with his fingers where they rest on her left hip, the other roughly working her right nipple. She comes with a crash, a primal grunt and a keen. Grateful as always for having witnessed that, he thrusts and bucks against her quivering body a few more times, and blacks out.

Mulder comes to to the feeling of weight across his chest, nails scraping his sweaty scalp, an open mouth working its way down his face, Scully’s tongue demanding entrance into his mouth. She gets it and they stay there, clutching and panting and licking, for what feels like several minutes. Wet and hot everywhere. He gulps in lungfuls of air between her assaults, and then little by little she stills. Suddenly, they go from feral to cuddly, and he remembers that it’s always been this way with them.

He is still inside her, reaching inside her, back through time and forward into the unknown. They wriggle briefly, separating only for an instant and moving gracelessly over to the neater side of the bed. Nobody's sleeping on the wet spot tonight. It's teamwork at its best, he thinks as she arranges herself not-too-neatly half on top of him. He wonders whether he should bother disentangling from her so he can get his pants all the way off. Whatever, his mind yawns and he holds her closer.

He must be tripping again. He sees them in the tesseract of their lives, the hypercube, the geometric and theoretical space made up of moments in time, contained and preserved and living, an infinite number of planes of existence where they’ve lain together like this. Time is not at all a universal invariant; it all depends on your vantage point. It dilates and contracts and leaves marks on your body, an infinite number of marks, all at once, everywhere. 

When she kisses the bullet scar on his left shoulder, he thinks of this, the tesseract: She’s kissing him at thirty-five years old. He knows that elsewhere in this space made up of spaces, his thirty-five year old self, lean and desperate, feels a phantom ache in this very spot. 

His fingertips trace her tattoo. She’s thirty-four, and her cherry lips rest plump and defiant against one another in the same instant as her eyes snarl at him, daring him, knowing that he can't, that he's a coward, but it's his- it's his life too. 

She arches her back into his touch. The smooth scar of her exit wound, mercifully high above her kidneys, nudges the heel of his hand. She’s thirty-six, she says she'll be back from New York very soon and walks out the door. He’s thirty-nine and he’s throwing up in the bullpen bathroom after he hears she’s been shot.

All moments exist within them, imprinted upon them, connected through what's happened and giving birth to what never will.

She’s humming some long-forgotten tune sleepily against his skin, her hair tickling his nose, and he draws the comforter around them. Torn out of their hyperspace they’re once again their fifty-plus year-old selves, bruised but not broken, and better, infinitely better. Before his thoughts fade out, he promises to continue being better. In the morning he’ll try to read her, try to calibrate his own emotions to a precision point, and try to decide if this will be the day he tells her once again that he loves her. For now he joins her in sleep.


End file.
